Errors of the Flagellants

Dan Graves, MSL

Church History Timeline

Does God want our blood? People who do not properly understand the
full pardon offered by Christ's atonement may try to appease God by
their own sufferings. Some attempt desperate remedies. This was the
case with the flagellants, bands of men who flogged themselves
publicly.

With the tide of monasticism came monks who whipped themselves or
each other for their errors. One who was especially noted for this
practice was Peter Damien, who hoped to suppress his lusts by scourging
himself.

During a dreadful plague in 1259, common folk of Europe took up the
idea. God was angry at the world. Something had to be done to turn away
his wrath. Gangs of men gathered to flog themselves for their own sins
and the sins of the world. Stripped to the waist they marched in
processions, sometimes numbering ten thousand penitents, whipping
themselves until they bled. When religious authorities opposed the
movement, it died out in 1261, only to rear its head in uglier forms
later.

When the black plague swept Europe, killing a quarter or more of the
population, it brought terror. Bands of hysterical flagellants sprang
up again. Among the errors taught by flagellants was that Christ was
about to destroy the world but that the Virgin Mary had interceded and
won a reprieve for any man who would join them for 33 days. As their
blood flowed, they claimed it was mingling with Christ's blood to save
the world and that their penitence would preserve the world from
perishing. Many other manias also emerged during this period, such as
uncontrollable dancing and Jew hunts.

The flagellants flourished into the fourteenth century. Following an
outbreak of the whippings in France, the University of Paris appealed
to the pope to suppress the heresy. On this day,
October 20, 1349, after careful inquiry, Pope Clement VI sent
letters to the bishops in Western Europe condemning the practice and
teachings of the flagellants. Even this measure did not fully succeed.
Groups of flagellants appeared again and again over the next century
and a half. Public flagellation occurred in Italy until the nineteenth
century and in Mexico, South America, the Philippines and other
countries into the twentieth century.